


One of These Days

by John_lzhc



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Bisexuality, Friendship, Gen, Queer Themes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-04
Updated: 2011-06-04
Packaged: 2017-10-20 03:07:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,882
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/208120
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/John_lzhc/pseuds/John_lzhc
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For the prompt: The Doctor finds out one  of his companions (your choice which one, or an OC) is struggling with  their sexuality because of past bullying, and takes them on a tour of  time/space/their own timeline designed to show them It Gets Better.   Bonus points for the Doctor casually discussing his own queerness and/or  asexuality.</p>
            </blockquote>





	One of These Days

**Author's Note:**

> Dyslexic Disclaimer: There is a good chance the following work contains spelling errors and typos. I'm aware of this, and I'm working on it. Most stuff is proofread, but sometimes errors will slip through. If you could either A: _politely point out spelling mistakes and appropriate corrections (British English please)_ , or B: _ignore them_ , that would be very helpful.

Some days it seems their whole world is running. Fleeing to shelter and flying from monsters. Rushing from the shadows and racing the clock. Running from angry lynch mobs when one of them puts their foot in it.

“Run!”

“What d'you think I'm doing!”

“Run faster.”

Run faster. Easy for him to say, he's not wearing-

 _catch, stumble, fall, grassland flinging itself up to_ \- he stops her fall with a grab, twisting her up and pushing her forwards.

“I did say those heels were a bad idea!”

She'd rip him a new one, but the first rocks fly overhead, the closest missing by mere inches. She saves her breath for escape.

TARDIS: there, roof just visible over the crest of the hill, fifty feet, twenty, five.

The Doctor barrels into the doors swings on the handle till she's bolting past him, rushes to the console heedless of the rocks, the _spears_ , sweeping through the doorway. Then the engines grind, the doors slam shut, they leave Mannas Seven and come to rest in the void.

They collapse against the railings, against the flight seat, bleeding off fear and relief in long, gasping laughter.

“Not as friendly as I'd heard, then.” The Doctor says when he can finally speak.

“I should hope not anyway! You probably shouldn't have jilted the high priestess like that though.” Donna sniggers at the vision of her lanky space-lunatic backing away in confused panic from a very curvaceous, lusciously underdressed woman with only one thing in mind. The Doctor goes almost scarlet, fiddles (pets) with the TARDIS controls.

“Well how was I supposed to know she wanted... that?”

“Pushing her cleavage in your face didn't give you a hint?”

“I was looking at her mosaics!” He ducks around the central column, hiding.

“Men, all the same” She follows him round.

“She was showing me around the temple.” Step away again, one big game of chase.

“And losing a lot of layers while she was at it, I noticed.”

“Well you would notice that.”

Silence. Shock. Fury.

Fear.

“What?! Why'd you say that?!”

“I just meant-” Confusion.

“Just meant what?!”

“Well, I...” hands flail, trying to say without saying.

“Well _don't!_ ”

Donna storms out, face thunderous, hair flying, head up: indignant, offended. She's not fooling anyone though.

**

Conflict is detrimental for all involved parties, and should be meditated as soon as it arises. Negotiations should be handled delicately, with care; for especially precarious situations, peace offerings may be advantageous.

“Milkshake?”

Donna's snuggled in a fleece blanket, sprawled on the wide doughnut-shaped ledge in what she's dubbed the 'sofa room': a roughly spherical room whose entire upholstered interior is effectively an enclosing sofa, seat pressing smoothly into the room a third of the way up the wall. She'd resolutely ignored the Doctor's entrance, focusing her attention on her book, but she cast him a glance when he coughed and spoke.

“Chocolate. Got ice-cream in it, the psychic one from fortieth century Naples. Or you can have the banana one if you want.”

Hand stretched out.

“Chocolate.” She draws her legs up, freeing what little proportion of the seat they took up: invitation. “If it'll stop your blithering.” A half-smile and a dig means forgiveness.

They sit in companionable silence, filling the space with milkshake and understanding. The doctor reaches across and tries to dunk a finger in Donna's glass, she swats him away. It's easy, this. They both know there are things to say, but neither feels pressure. The Doctor finishes his milkshake with a slurp, and decides now is the time to start.

“Are you all right?” Gentler than usual, he's treading cautiously.

“Fine” Lie. “I'll be all right.” Be: conjecture.

“Sure?” No lie this time. “What was it I said?”

“Nothing” everything. He stares at her and she _knows_ he not buying a word. He's oblivious when he forgets to pay attention, but sometimes focuses and just knows everything.

She could say. It would be so easy, just open her mouth and let the words spill out, words that have waited for years in her mouth. Give them freedom and stop feeling like she's going to choke. What's the worst that could happen (other than their destroying her?).

Something of the struggle must have shown on her face, something of the tension in the way she sits, because the Doctor reaches out and pulls her in for a hug, gathering her up in both arms to offer comfort that words cannot. She goes gratefully, and stays silent.

**

“I think I'm a bit gay.”

He's tinkering under the floor, she's swinging her feet from the flight chair, and six tiny words are a catharsis years in coming.

“Just a bit though. Bisexual maybe. I'm still figuring it out.” She leans forward to see him nod absently, examine another conduit. “Oiy! Spaceman!” She aims a kick to the grate.

“What was that for!” He's always indignant when she kicks his baby.

“Are you going to say anything?”

He stares at her blankly through the hatched metal.

“Pass me that spanner?”

Donna's spilling her heart onto the cold floor up here and he's.... tinkering. Petting. She wonders if it's an alien thing, or a head-to-full-of-mechanics-for-anything-else-try-again-later thing. He's the only one of him, and there's nothing to judge what's truly rude and what's plain difference. She glares until he comes out of the floor and sits on the edge of the access hatch, looking up expectantly.

“It's... hard to talk about. It doesn’t help when you dig around in the engines not looking like you're listening to a word I'm saying.” Blank look, he's waiting for her to explain. What for, she couldn't say. Why she thinks she is, or why it's hard to talk about. The latter is easier (and considerably more appropriate). “Back when I was a kid- when I was at school, they could tell. I think. Not sure how. But kids picked on me for it, kicked off about being in the changing rooms with me, started a few fights. Not that it stopped when I slept with Jimmy Collins. Any excuse, really. Then a rumour got around to mum and she didn't say a word to me for a month. Still likes to bring it up when we fight.

“I'm not ashamed or anything, I'm just- it's hard.”

He nods, thoughtfully, and there's something not quite like understanding but close enough. Like he understands the shape of the problem, but not the details.

Then he grins like a maniac. Oh dear.

* *

“I give you: Manchester City!” The Doctor declares, flinging the TARDIS doors wide open.

“I've been there. It rains.” She's less than enthusiastic. He's managed to turn a soulwrenching confession into a field trip in twenty-five seconds. She's going to kill him.

“Not any more! By the year twenty ninety climate change has seen to the weather. Well, the weather for the twenty-sixth of August anyway. Now come on, you need to see this.”

“Yeah? What are you dragging me to this time?” She storms outside, angry and hurt and determined to hate every second of the next hour, just to show him. Of course he could win her over in a moment with a planet (all of time and space and they go north?), but he doesn’t need to know that.

“The one hundredth annual Manchester Pride!”

“Oh. My. God.” It looks like a giant clown's ejaculated all over the street.

Later on, a giant clown _explodes_ in the street, but it was just one of the balloons pulled along in the parade so nobody minds once they get the glitter out of their eyes (dissolving glitter: perk of the environmental movement).

Donna and the Doctor sit on a wall with twenty other spectators, the Doctor chatting happily about non-dimensional physics to a bemused eight year old, Donna staring as the one hundredth Manchester Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Pansexual, Polysexual, Asexual, Transgender, Third-Gender, Gender-variant, Intersex, Queer and Polyamorous Pride parade whirls past in a flurry of light and laughter and smiles and – She stares at a woman wearing nothing but a sequinned white bikini and blue glitter covering her _entire body_. Someone to the left is saying that this should be the last parade: this is the first year there hasn't been at least one protester, nobody cares any more.

They wander the crowds all day, half the city centre ground to a halt to make way: there's a lot to see (though the Doctor won't let her read the pamphlets on the LGBPPATTgGvIQP history month stall). Night falls and they eat overpriced chips on a bench in electric twilight.

“Well?” He asks, grinning like a child on a sugar high.

“Very... sparkly. Why now though? They have this in my time too.” She's impressed, don't get her wrong, but she knows he has a point and can't quite figure it out.

“This is the last one.”

“You what?”

“Next year they say to hell with the alphabet soup and make it a celebration of humanitie's capacity to be and love. First one in the world, but they all follow. Those children that picked on you at school? That mentality is dying. By this time it's all but gone in Britain. Soon, all over the world. It's not perfect, not by a long shot, and it's only a few centuries before you're all arguing over the ban on mixed species marriages, but my point is it gets better.”

“Hu.” Well, what do you say to that? She picks another chip, watches the crowds, waits for it to sink in. Wonders why he looks so wistful, so sad. “What about you?” she asks.

“What about me?”

“Epic celebration of Love and humanity and all that, and you're sitting there looking like someone stole your favourite toy.”

“I'm... disappointed.”

“That it took us so long? Well excuse me spaceman-”

“Not with you. With timelords, not humans.”

Oh.

“Not so open minded, were they?”

He's staring at the pavement with apparent fascination, as though the chaos in his brain will start to make sense if he focuses hard enough on the cracks.

“It wasn't the same issue. Not quite. It didn't matter who you slept with, as long as that was it.”

“Doctor, I do _not_ want to think about _you_ sleeping with anyone.” That got a smile out of him, at least.

“You could like someone, you could... 'do the deed'-”

“That's even worse”

“-but you weren't supposed to love someone. Weren't supposed to stay with someone. They wouldn't try and stop you if you did they just...”

“Picked on you?”

“In an austere, majestic sort of way, yes. Thing is, most timelord children are- were created rather than born. Spawned in the Looms, brought up in small units with carers on rotas. 'Couples' weren't done, and when they did they weren't supposed to do children. At all.

“I'd just hoped- given time they'd have got better. Given time.”

“Doctor-”

“So, want to learn to fly the TARDIS?” And they're off again, running for the dawn, chasing that horizon.

One of these days she's going to get used to travelling with an avoidant, ADHD alien in a spaceship that looks like a box with an inside that's bigger than the outside. Today is not that day. Today is better.

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: Manchester Pride really _does_ look like a giant clown ejaculated all over the street.


End file.
